During an Apple conference on October 4 the iPhone 5 is expected to be announced and with that announcement a new ‘Assistant’ feature is expected to arrive, a feature that would double the devices RAM to 1GB.

According to reports Assistant is the next evolution of the Apple’s voice control system.

Rumors say Assistant is a new way to interact with your iPhone based solely off voice commands, for example a user might say “make appointment at 9am with Dentist” at which point the iPhone 5 will create that appointment in the user’s calendar.

Another example from WebProNews uses location based reminders alongside assistant for example a user might say:

“Remind me to buy milk when I arrive at the market.”

Once the iPhone 5 user arrives at a store that sells milk the reminder will be shown using location based services.

The Assistant feature is also expected to offer GPS directions based off voice commands, power your text messaging and read text messages back to users and even ask questions about what you want so it can provide proper assistance. For example you might say “Email John Doe” and the phone would ask you which one of their email addresses to use if multiple addresses are found. read more

Apple is expected to officially announce the iPhone 5 in September or October of this year and on the heels of that announcement we have compiled a list of possible iPhone 5 features as rumored from various online sources. While we still don’t know what the iPhone 5 price will be, these rumors give us a good idea of some major possibilities for the devices hardware and software future.

New Design

Apple is expected to go bezel-free with the release of the iPhone 5, returning to a design that’s closer to the iPhone 3G than the iPhone 4. According to some reports the curved back can help eliminate “Death Grip” while a tapered design is said to be in the work that would create a thinner bottom than top, allowing the phone to sit on an angle while placed on a flat surface.

Another rumor says the device will feature a metallic back instead of the devices signature black and white options we’ve seen in the past, however a curved glass design could also be used as Apple is rumored to have recently purchased 300 glass cutting machines. read more

Tablets are the hottest thing right now and very few can stand up to the iPad. While Samsung’s Galaxy tablet and Amazon’s Kindle trail the iPad in popularity, the latter company is working on an iPad rival that could change the tablet landscape.

Amazon working on a tablet has yet to be officially confirmed but has been talked about in tech circles. The tablet is purportedly being built by Samsung, destined for a summer launch and will be running a highly customized version of Android instead of version 3.0 Honeycomb. So what else will the tablet pack? Peter Rojas talked about the tablet’s purported specs:

Let’s start with a critical question about this tablet: What version of Android will it run? I think there’s an assumption that any Amazon tablet will run Android 3.0, Google’s tablet-specific version of the OS. However, given Google’s recent moves to tighten how OEMs can use Honeycomb, this might not be so likely. In fact, it’s entirely possible that Amazon’s tablet, like the NOOK Color, will use Android as a base upon which to build a totally customized experience that tightly integrates Amazon services. That integration would let Amazon charge a lot less for its tablet than it would otherwise. The reason Barnes & Noble has been able to price the NOOK Color so aggressively ($250 versus $350 to $450 for comparably-sized and spec’d Android tablets) is because they’re assuming you’re going to buy a bunch of books from them over the course of owning it.

The question is, does the world need another tablet, especially one that aims to go head to head with the iPad? Amazon may be banking on integration with its music and book services to boost revenue in those departments. Apple took the opposite approach of using digital stores to boost sales of the Hardware but since Amazon has an established media store, tablets that leverage those purchases may give it some ammo against other tablets.

My pity goes to those who bought iPad yesterday.

As we were expecting, Apple has introduced iPad 2 with an entirely new design that is 33 percent thinner and 15 percent lighter than the original. While maintaining its 9.7-inch LED-backlit LCD screen, iPad 2 boasts of having Apple’s new dual-core A5 processor for faster performance. It now has two cameras for FaceTime and Photo Booth and for capturing 720p HD video. Despite all the new features, battery life remains at 10 hours. The new tablet also runs on both AT&T and Verizon’s 3G networks. Black or white? They have both colors. The new iPad 2 Smart Cover with self-aligning magnetic hinge is also an innovative piece of product by itself. Prices stay the same.

What was more stunning was the presence of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who is currently on medical leave, to present the new product. The obviously ill head of Apple received a standing ovation from the throng of press people who witnessed the event.

“With more than 15 million iPads sold, iPad has defined an entirely new category of mobile devices,” jobs said. “While others have been scrambling to copy the first generation iPad, we’re launching iPad 2, which moves the bar far ahead of the competition and will likely cause them to go back to the drawing boards yet again.”

Would I buy iPad 2? I doubt. I’ll wait for iPad 3 which we expect to be better than iPad 2.

Twitter is moving quite fast this week, On Thursday morning we reported that Ping Integration was coming to the social network and later than afternoon they were already showing off the new feature which brings iTunes song previews to Twitter.com.

The new video demonstration of the integration shows how Twitter can now be used as a forum for music discovery.

Unfortunately the video demo is more of an ad than an actual product demonstration of the Ping, Twitter relationship. Although the sleek design and what appears to be an easy to navigate interface shows that Twitter is taking the partnership serious. read more

It looks like Ping (a music social network from Apple) has a new best friend, as Twitter has just announced that Ping users (not to be confused with Ping.fm or Ping.com) can now connect their accounts with the micro blogging social network.

Starting today Ping, iTunes’ new social network for music, and Twitter are making it even easier for people to share music discoveries with their friends by putting Ping activity, song previews and links to purchase and download music from the iTunes Store right in their Tweets on Twitter.com. [...]

Once you’ve linked the accounts, whenever you Post, Like, Review, or tell your friends why you purchased a song or album on Ping, this activity will also be tweeted to your Twitter followers – complete with playable song previews and links to purchase and download music from iTunes. (Official Twitter Blog)

Users who connect their Twitter accounts to Ping will be able to find Twitter friends (or rather people they follow) who also use Ping, which should help make the service easier for new comers to adopt (as very few people enjoy using social networks without their friends).

This partnership is obviously a big win for Apple, as the company previously tried (and failed) to establish a similar relationship with Facebook.

Although its still unclear whether Apple will make a second attempt to pursue a similar relationship with Facebook, we may see the music giant reach out to other social networks in the future (with the exception of Google Me of course).

With Apple’s new iTunes-based social network Ping skyrocketing past 1 million users in its first two days, it was perhaps inevitable that it come strongly across the radar of hackers, spammers, and scammers. In fact, it took less than 24 hours for the first wave to spam to appear. Now the same problems that have long plagued other popular networks like Facebook and Twitter have taken root in Ping.

The million dollar question is: how effectively, and quickly, can Apple not only eradicate existing spam, but prevent future spam from occurring?

According to eSecurity Planet, Bradley Anstis of M86 Security suggests Apple could begin by effectively disabling links in comments, since comments are the offending medium. “It would be too much to manage comment approvals, but implementing some form of automation to strip out links from comments is a good starting point,” he said. read more

It’s been long time coming, since Netflix hammered the first nail in the coffin of the social networking features of their site this past spring. But Friday the end became reality as the doors closed definitively on Netflix community features.

The move comes just days after Apple launched its new product-based social networking service Ping in iTunes. Now Netflix admits the community aspects of their site were hardly used and their engineering resources would be better spent devoted to developing aspects of the site that are highly popular – such as video streaming. Whether Netflix’s poor experience blending products, services, and social interaction will bode unwell for Ping remains to be seen. read more

Apple’s new Ping network has debuted with the most recent release of iTunes.

Ping, not to be confused with social network updating service Ping.fm (or the web site Ping.com, which has nothing to do with music or social media whatsoever), is Apple’s new niche social networking service dedicated to connecting people based on their tastes in music. Ping is not a standalone web site; it comes packaged only with the software, which is available for both PC and Mac.

Interestingly, Ping is disabled by default and is therefore an opt-in user experience. One might think that Apple would be pushing for users to try the free service, but Apple is promoting social interaction by making users’ details such as name and hometown visible to the public unless specifically set to private. Furthermore, the types of music you enjoy, based on your iTunes statistics, can be hidden – so that embarrassing fetish for show tunes need not be known to the world. read more

Location based services have taken over the cellular market in the last several years and now Apple has decided that your location information may be worth a bunch of cash. Apple changed their company license today to state that they now store “the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device” and that they have the right to share it with “partners and licensees.”

Apple is working to calm customer fears, claiming that all location based data is “collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you.” It’s a statement that should seem familiar to Facebook users who were told the same thing months ago, only to find out that their profile information and the profile information of their friends were being shared with advertisers.

Unlike Facebook, there is apparently no way to opt-out of the Apple policy. Actually that’s not totally true, you can refuse to ever download another app for the life of your device and then stay away from the iTunes store, at which point you aren’t forced to agree to the companies new terms of service before proceeding with purchases. read more